CLEVELAND — It's a commonly known, unwritten rule in baseball that if a pitcher has a perfect game or no-hitter going, you don't talk to him in the dugout, and you don't have a reliever up and warming in the bullpen.
But what if the pitcher comes up to you to chat? That's what Alex Cobb did during Sunday's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates , but it was because he wanted to alleviate any possible anxiety manager Stephen Vogt might be feeling in that moment.
In the fifth inning of Sunday's game, which the Guardians went on to win 6-1 , Cobb still had not allowed a baserunner. He had faced 15 Pirates batters, and he had sat them down in order.
But this was also his first start after returning from the injured list after sustaining a fractured nail, and there was really no way he was going to be allowed to throw the amount of pitches needed to actually pull off a perfect game or no-hitter through all nine innings.
No manager wants to be the guy who has to take a pitcher out of the game with history on the line, regardless of how valid the reason might be. So Cobb wanted to make sure Vogt was aware he didn't care about being pulled early, and he also didn't want the team to not warm up anybody behind him with the game still close, even if it meant breaking the no-talking protocol.
"Obviously, I know the situation," Cobb said. "Realistically, I wasn't going to be able to go nine innings. I could love to, but knowing there's this superstition in the game where you can't warm anybody up when you have a no-hitter going, and for where we're at right now, I wanted him to [know] that's silly to me right now. We need to go win this game."
Vogt was in a position thst he was going to have to take Cobb out eventually, unless he finished the game by recording nine outs on nine total pitches. But it was one less thing on his mind.
"Alex being the pro that he is [said], 'Hey, I don't care what happens. I know you need to take me out when you need to take me out,'" Vogt said. "It just speaks to who he is."
Cobb took that perfect game into the seventh inning. And that was when he lost it a pretty painful way — both literally and figuratively.
Leading off the seventh, Pirates infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa lined a ball back to the mound. Cobb nearly got his glove on it, but it hit off him and rolled away from the mound, going for a single to end the bids for both a perfect game and a no-hitter — and possibly give Cobb a bit of a bruise in the process.
For a moment, Cobb laid on the ground, making sure he wasn't hurt, while also realizing the perfect game bid was over.
"You're doing a systems check," Cobb said of what went through his mind while he remained on the ground. "You're like, 'Is anything broken? No? All right.' I lost feeling in my [left] hand. I'm going to sit here for a second. … But you're just laying down hoping — you just say a quick prayer that nothing's broken and you're able to keep going."
Cobb was checked out by trainers on the mound and was ruled to be fine to continue pitching. But, after he surrendered a single to Bryan Reynolds a few pitches later, and considering he was already on a pitch count, Vogt finally went to take the ball from him.
It was the closest a Cleveland pitcher had gotten to a perfect game or a no-hitter since Triston McKenzie on Aug. 15, 2021, in Detroit . A Cleveland pitcher hasn't thrown a no-hitter since Len Barker's perfect game in 1981.
It was also a highlight-type moment for Cobb, who had a nightmarish 2024 offseason and season before being acquired by the Guardians before the trade deadline . Cobb needed hip surgery over the winter and, as he rehabbed from that procedure, struggled through multiple, unrelated setbacks, including a shoulder issue and a blister.
After making his first All-Star team in 2023, he had to wait until August to pitch in a major league game in 2024. Then he fractured his fingernail. But he now has a 2.76 ERA with the Guardians.
"You go into each one of these comebacks and you really don't know how you're going to perform because it's hard to jump into a season and be sharp," Cobb said. "The bullpen work is maybe 65-, 70-percent effort, and then it's a different game when you're between the lines and the lights are on."
Cobb and Matthew Boyd have given the Guardians two veterans to help stabilize a starting rotation that has been plagued by injuries and inconsistency. If the Guardians are to hold off the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins , their contributions are likely to be crucial to not only win games but to save the bullpen a bit.
"You look up when these relievers come in and there's a lot of high innings next to their name, so you try to go deep into games," Cobb said. "Both of us are coming back from injuries, so it's not easy to get seven, eight out of us. But you do your best to go at least six and hopefully late September, mid-September, we're goin to be able to push that to seven, eight innings and give some of those guys a breather.
"But I think you have two guys that have been around quite a bit, so we're able to usually navigate a lineup with our our best stuff some days."
On Sunday, though, Cobb certainly had his best stuff.
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis1@gannett.com. Read more about the Guardians at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/cleveland-guardians. Follow him on Threads at @ByRyanLewis .
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Guardians starter Alex Cobb's perfect game bid comes to painful end
